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SATA RAID for HD
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deproduction



Joined: 27 May 2004
Posts: 8
Location: Denver

PostPosted: Sat 29 May 2004, 17:26    Post subject: this is great. Reply with quote

You guys make my head hurt. I got word from Highpoint today that they're sending out the 8-port card. I will be in touch constantly. I need to go buy 8 drives ASAP... preferably the hitachi's. Can any of you steer me towards a deal that will lighten the load of this $2K investment... its a lot for a little non-profit like Deproduction.org.

I found the 250Gig Hitachi's for $195 at computergiants.com. That's the best price I can see after a LOT of searching. I found the Maxtors (which write faster than the Hitachi's, but read slower) for $180 each... though only from somewhat shady retailers.

Check out the mind-blowing (and probably somewhat inflated) numbers they're reporting for this card on their website.
http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA/index.htm

Read at 530 MB/s and write at 410 MB/s with an 8-drive 10K Raptor RAID
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deproduction



Joined: 27 May 2004
Posts: 8
Location: Denver

PostPosted: Sat 29 May 2004, 17:31    Post subject: enclosures Reply with quote

Also, any final enclosure suggestions for my enclosure/s? I want something that looks pretty for the clients, but is cheap.
Rob's suggestion of the Addonics Disk Array 4SA (X2) is what I'm leaning towards, but something cheaper would be nice... (like putting the drives on the floor) Wink
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mdc1138



Joined: 26 May 2004
Posts: 17
Location: Austin, TX

PostPosted: Sat 29 May 2004, 18:00    Post subject: Cases and cards Reply with quote

How much was that Addonics solution? You could get 8 external PPA, Inc. cases fro $400 total from Fry's. That's not just cheap, but cheep - I wouldn't stack the drives on top of each other, they'd get hot.

Also, I would very much like to get one of these to play with too - I've got my HD card installed and am doing some benchmarking this weekend.

zipzoomfly.com is my usual favorite inexpensive vendor...I think they do (or did) do free 2nd day shipping. I've bought 3 or 4 drives through them and never had any problems whatsoever.

-mike
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Mike Curtis
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RMN
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Joined: 04 Feb 2003
Posts: 587
Location: Lisboa, Portugal

PostPosted: Sat 29 May 2004, 21:32    Post subject: Reply with quote

Personally, I'd go for Western Digital instead of Hitachi. Not only because the Hitachis are basically rebranded IBMs (remember the huge Deathstar fiasco?), but also because WD does not make SCSI drives, so you can be sure their SATAs are not deliberately "crippled".

The 250 GB WDs cost $193 at NewEgg.com. If you really want the Hitachis, they cost $182, also at NewEgg.

P.S. - Following Tony's suggestion, and unless someone has something to oppose, I will move this thread to the (public) hardware forum.

RMN
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mdc1138



Joined: 26 May 2004
Posts: 17
Location: Austin, TX

PostPosted: Sun 30 May 2004, 0:11    Post subject: Drives Reply with quote

Not that it's rock solid info, but when I was discussing drives with a RAID vendor, the specifically spoke out against WD. I don't know if it was a bad batch, or a bad experience, or what, but they were averse to WD. But that's just one data point.

Yeah, the DeathStars sucked, but haven't had any trouble in awhile. Robert - any news on that front to report?

And aren't the Hitachis a little bit faster? Never hurts...

HEY I'd also try and be sure that your drives have SMART technology - a good way to see if the drive is going to fail at some point.

Anybody know of any software to let you check SMART status in a RAID or FW drive as opposed to plain old ATA or SATA drives? Disk Utility reported a failing SMART status in my ATA G4/867 boot drive when it had been acting flaky, so I backed it up and replaced it.

-mike
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RMN
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Joined: 04 Feb 2003
Posts: 587
Location: Lisboa, Portugal

PostPosted: Sun 30 May 2004, 4:01    Post subject: Reply with quote

S.M.A.R.T. won't warn you about any errors before they happen. It keeps counters of recovered errors and warns you when you're likely to start getting unrecoverable ones. But some types of errors will be unrecoverable the very first time.

As long as you run an error check on your drives regularly (i.e. once every couple of weeks), you'll spot those problems, usually before S.M.A.R.T. does. Windows has had support for S.M.A.R.T. for 8 years or so, and I've only seen it give a warning once (and it was for a drive that I already knew was dying).

I had another 5 drives fail (three of them gradually, two catastrophically) without S.M.A.R.T. noticing anything. So it's really not something you can trust.

If you want data about drive speeds or reliability, go to http://storagereview.com/.

I've never used Hitachi drives. I have used plenty of WDs, and only saw one fail (partially, I didn't lose any data). The only brand I've had significant problems with is Maxtor.

RMN
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Last edited by RMN on Thu 3 Aug 2006, 22:25; edited 1 time in total
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deproduction



Joined: 27 May 2004
Posts: 8
Location: Denver

PostPosted: Sun 30 May 2004, 8:26    Post subject: drives and enclosures Reply with quote

The addonics case is $150 for 4. That's probably my best option.
Those hitachis were 192 or 196 on newegg, not 182.
Mike, I told Highpoint about you (and Rob) and I'll keep suggesting that he send you a card to test. If nothing else, I'll keep you posted all along, and you can buy the card, which has been available for under $200 for months. If they let me, I'll send you the OSX drivers, and you'll have exactly what I have.
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mdc1138



Joined: 26 May 2004
Posts: 17
Location: Austin, TX

PostPosted: Sun 30 May 2004, 15:48    Post subject: Reply with quote

That Addonics case definitely would be a better deal then.

Good info on SMART - I'll pass that along.

A-ha! I'll probably buy a Highpoint card then.

When are you getting the drivers?
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RMN
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Joined: 04 Feb 2003
Posts: 587
Location: Lisboa, Portugal

PostPosted: Sun 30 May 2004, 23:15    Post subject: Re: drives and enclosures Reply with quote

deproduction wrote:
Those hitachis were 192 or 196 on newegg, not 182.


Yes, $194, I was looking at the wrong page, $182 is the [p]ATA model. I did manage to find the SATA version for $189, at compbus.com, but I'd rather pay a bit more and get it from a bigger retailer.

RMN
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deproduction



Joined: 27 May 2004
Posts: 8
Location: Denver

PostPosted: Wed 2 Jun 2004, 2:52    Post subject: CompUSA Reply with quote

I hate to support the big boys, but my local CompUSA has the Maxtor Ultras on sale for $159. One vendor had agreed to send out the Hitachis for $185, including shipping, but since I don't have to pay sales tax or shipping at CompUSA, I am going to go with the Maxtors, for $25 less per drive.

I ordered the Addonics box today, and got the drives. HighPoint e-mailed me the driver and sent off the card, but there is BAD news.

This first release of this driver will run in PIO mode and not DMA mode. So performance will be slow. Allen says he hopes the bug is easy to fix and DMA will be enabled soon for another release.

I'll have a couple very skilled programmers and EE's in the office this weekend. I'm hopeful that they might be able to re-write the driver themselves, but they aren't too confident.
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deproduction



Joined: 27 May 2004
Posts: 8
Location: Denver

PostPosted: Wed 2 Jun 2004, 2:54    Post subject: Hardware Vs Software RAID Reply with quote

I asked Allen at HighPoint whether I'd be setting up a Hardware RAID or a Software RAID. Here's his reply.

Tony, this is an interesting question. I get asked this all of the time and
almost every opinion is different.

What is your definition of hardware RAID? What is considered hardware RAID? What is your definition of software RAID?

I wanted to get you guys' opinion on this.

Tony
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mdc1138



Joined: 26 May 2004
Posts: 17
Location: Austin, TX

PostPosted: Wed 2 Jun 2004, 21:59    Post subject: Reply with quote

Here's my understanding of software vs. hardware RAID - if I'm wrong, somebody PLEASE bust me on it:

OK, here's what I know (or think I do):

Software RAID: The computer's CPU is responsible for divvying up the bits between the various drives. The overhead involved in this is outweighed by the increase in read/write speed in RAID zero, so nobody blinks about this one. But ANY software RAID is stealing SOME processor cycles in order to handle the complexity of splitting the data across multiple drives. This is no biggie for RAID 0.

HOWEVER, for RAID 1, which involves an even number of disks, half of which are writing one copy, and half of which are writing the backup, typically RAID speed is cut in half, since the computer basically writes one copy to half the drives, then another copy to the other half of the drives.

I haven't seen RAID 3 or 5 as software RAID on Mac, but in theory it could be done - the computer goes to the extra work of calculating parity data & values, such that if any one drive fails, the data can be rebuilt from the other drive/s' parity info. This would, of course, involve writing more data AND doing some calculations, so it's a serious issue.

This is why hardware RAID makes sense - a dedicated controller takes care of all this stuff for you - the PCI card has some amount of chip brains on it that handles all this in realtime (up to a throughput limit, 190 MB/sec in the case of the Highpoint card apparently, but at what RAID level I don't know). So as far as the computer knows, it's busy writing it's data out at, say, 50 MB/sec. But the hardware controller might be writing out 100 MB/sec to a RAID 1, or 75 MB/sec to a RAID 3 3 drive setup, or 60 MB/sec to a RAID 5, as well as handling all the parity calculations.

As a practical matter, RAID level zero is viable to do software only, RAID 1 sometimes (but at the cost of halving the throughput), RAID 3 and 5 I've only seen as hardware RAID.
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RMN
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Joined: 04 Feb 2003
Posts: 587
Location: Lisboa, Portugal

PostPosted: Wed 2 Jun 2004, 22:30    Post subject: Reply with quote

mdc1138 wrote:
Here's my understanding of software vs. hardware
HOWEVER, for RAID 1, which involves an even number of disks, half of which are writing one copy, and half of which are writing the backup, typically RAID speed is cut in half,


That would be true if the RAID speed was limited by the processor. It's not, it's limited by the drives. Basically, you just increase the load on the CPU, but the speed remains the same (this is technically RAID 0+1, BTW, not RAID 1 - "pure" RAID-1 is a mirrored JBOD). A 6 drive RAID-0 will give you about the same write speed as a 6+6 drive RAID 0+1. The read speed can be higher on the RAID 0+1 system.

mdc1138 wrote:
I haven't seen RAID 3 or 5 as software RAID on Mac, but in theory it could be done - the computer goes to the extra work of calculating parity data & values, such that if any one drive fails, the data can be rebuilt from the other drive/s' parity info. This would, of course, involve writing more data AND doing some calculations, so it's a serious issue.


PCs have had software RAID-5 since Windows NT 3.5 (at least, probably before). Unlike RAID-0 and RAID-1, RAID-5 requires a lot of calculations. It's not just a matter of splitting the bytes over the drives, it involves doing parity calculations. And x86 CPUs are very, very slow at doing XOR operations (I don't know if PPC is better, I suspect it is, but probably not by much). So, unlike RAID-0 (or 1, or 0+1), in software RAID-5, the speed of the CPU (and the load that the RAID puts on the CPU) starts to be an issue.

Hardware RAID also usually involves (large) caches, that can do wonders for writes, especially in fragmented disks.

Both the Highpoint and RAIDCore controllers are "software" solutions, with no hardware XORing and little or no cache on the controller.

RMN
~~~


Last edited by RMN on Wed 2 Jun 2004, 22:36; edited 1 time in total
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RMN
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PostPosted: Wed 2 Jun 2004, 22:35    Post subject: Re: CompUSA Reply with quote

deproduction wrote:
I am going to go with the Maxtors, for $25 less per drive.


Good luck. In my experience, Maxtor drives have the higest failure rate of any brand.

deproduction wrote:

I ordered the Addonics box today, and got the drives. HighPoint e-mailed me the driver and sent off the card, but there is BAD news.

This first release of this driver will run in PIO mode and not DMA mode. So performance will be slow.


Slow is an understatement. I doubt you'll see more than 20 MB/s Confused

RMN
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mdc1138



Joined: 26 May 2004
Posts: 17
Location: Austin, TX

PostPosted: Fri 4 Jun 2004, 15:09    Post subject: Mac OS X Highpoint stuff Reply with quote

Eeek...then I'm going to wait to buy one of the cards until the drivers can perform at a reasonable level.
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